With All My Heart
by Ivory Novelist
Summary: A oneshot inspired by Doc Roe's prayer in Bastogne. Please Read and Review. Thanks!


A/N: I absolutely love Doc Roe's prayer, from Episode 7:Bastogne. It was actually written by St. Francis. Since I think it's so beautiful, I wrote this fic for it. It didn't turn out quite as I had anticipated, but I think I like it, nonetheless. I'll perhaps use this prayer again in the future.

Please Read and Review! Thanks!

Disclaimer: Not mine. Don't sue.

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With All My Heart

_"Lord, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love, with all my heart. With all my heart."_

He tried to feel. He tried to breathe. And he didn't know where the prayer had come from. He must have learned it years ago, as a boy. His grandmother had taken him to church – the Catholic Church. The traiteur grandmother. And suddenly, he was sitting in foxholes with a red cross on his arm, uttering old prayers that didn't make any sense. St. Francis. That's whom the words belonged to. Why was he stealing the words? Why did he think they would help him here? What did it have anything to do with him?

"Lord…" It was a whisper. He closed his eyes and tried to move his lungs like a normal human being. Something was in his hand. What was it? A rosary? (Muck's rosary) A cord around his fingers – maybe they would freeze and fall off. Then he would be a useless medic. He already was. But as long as he had his fingers, he was stuck in the job.

"Lord…" He had thought about cutting off his fingers. He could take his pocketknife and start… And who would find him? Who would pick up his fingers and take his hand and his body and his heart and his frozen tears? Who would give a fuck? Who would save the savior?

"Lord…." He was shaking. He didn't know why. He didn't feel the cold. He didn't feel anything anymore. He didn't feel the blood when someone screamed his name.

"Medic!" His name wasn't Eugene. Wasn't Roe. It was Medic. It was Doc. It was his fucking purpose. "Medic!" Jesus Christ, make it stop. He shivered and didn't hear it. His hands covered his ears, but he didn't know they were quaking. He wasn't going to fucking answer anymore. He wasn't going to run to the rescue, he wasn't going to remember his purpose. He was going to stay in this half-dug foxhole, in this frozen pit, and he was going to wait for death. A German explosion. Just like Muck and Penkala. But he didn't have a Malarkey to pick up the pieces and bleed inside with loss. They would just find someone else. That's all. He was replaceable.

"Lord…" He opened his eyes and exhaled. He unwound the cord, and the blood started to flow through his fingers again. The white portion began to turn pink again. He stared hard. His face was white. He was around death so much that he was sucking it up, and he looked like it. He thought about the morphine. He didn't have much left. He could use all of it right now. He could induce a lovely end. He could save himself the German explosion. He could just fall asleep – fall asleep and dream into heaven.

"Lord…" But he couldn't be selfish. The men needed that morphine. They needed to kill off brain-cells and freeze nerves when the demons grew too hungry to leave them alone. And he needed to stay alive just so he could fly to them and stick it in their flesh, in their torn and mangled flesh, so beautiful. It was beautiful, wasn't it? It had to be. Nothing else was fucking beautiful anymore.

"Lord, help me…" First breath, second breath, quick interval. He began to wrap the cord around his fingers. He could barely feel it. Cutting them off wouldn't be so bad. When was the last time he'd eaten? He couldn't remember. Everything was sleep, sleep, sleep, death. Oh, God, he was tired of it. He was just so fucking tired. He slept but he hadn't rested in months. He took care of everyone else, but no one took care of him. No, he had to do that on his own. Everything on his fucking own. He was tired of independence.

"_Lord, grant that I may…"_ His eyes begged for sleep. His whole body lacked strength. No one knew this. No one cared. No one came to see him in his half-dug pit. Except the snow. He could always count on the snow. But the snow couldn't touch him. It couldn't hold him. It couldn't kiss him. It couldn't speak to him. It could only make him cold, only make him numb, so numb that it didn't fucking matter if it couldn't do the other things. He couldn't feel anyway. He didn't even shake anymore. He didn't. He didn't. His hand rocked.

"…_not so much seek…,"_ He had asked Martin to tell him about the boy they'd left behind on that patrol. He had forced him to describe the neck wound, the blood, the boy's face. The way Heffron was screaming. Roe enjoyed feeling guilty. He enjoyed hurting himself. He enjoyed his secret wallowing and imagining the boy he hadn't saved. He could have. None of the others were able to reach him, but Doc Roe could have. Because Doc Roe always reached a fallen man. He just hadn't tried this time.

He had tried with Hoobler. He had tried with Toye and Guarnere. He had tried with Compton. But he couldn't mend a severed artery. He couldn't put the legs back on. He couldn't erase memories or mend hearts. And every time he failed, he broke himself. And he prayed. Just as he prayed before any of it happened, when German artillery rained in, when gunshots ripped the silence.

"…_to be consoled as to console…"_ He remembered the night spent with Spina and Heffron in a foxhole. They had shut out the world with the burlap cover and stretched a single blanket over themselves. Heffron had tried not to cry, and Spina hadn't said much. Roe had tried his best with chocolate and then had settled against Heffron, offering his warmth too. He would give anything for his boys. But that night, as they had fallen asleep in the frozen hole, Roe had indirectly begged for love. He had begged for comfort. He had rested his head on Heffron's shoulder, curled against Heffron's body, and his skin had ached into the other soldier, asking for attention. But he had settled for sleep. And in the morning, when he left that piece of consolation, he hadn't known why.

"…_to be understood as to understand…"_ He wrapped the cord around his fingers again. They wouldn't bleed. They wouldn't split open. They would only swell a bit and redden. He stared hard. He waited. They didn't break. They didn't tear. They didn't rip. He imagined what it would be like if he didn't have any hands. Just for a second. And then the thought was gone. He didn't know why he thought of these things. Maybe it was what he had seen. Maybe it influenced him. Influence. He hated that word. He had always hated it. Especially when he was boy. The way it rolled off adult lips had angered him. His eyes fluttered. How long ago since he was a boy? Part of him thought it was yesterday. The other part didn't think he ever had been.

Jesus Christ, it was cold. And he wasn't even shivering. He didn't move. He sometimes wondered if he was still breathing. Someone had asked him once. It was easy to think that maybe he wasn't, when he sat against that stump in the snow. It had become his spot, after that patrol. It gave him comfort. He didn't know why. He didn't have any answers. All he knew was that his fingers were numb and they only burned a little after several minutes with the cord wrapped around them.

Malarkey had taken the rosary. Muck's rosary. Or what had been left of it, anyway. It was a miracle that any of it had survived the bomb. The rosary had made it. Muck and Penkala hadn't. How the fuck did that make any sense? God will save the beads but not the men.

"Because it's your job to save the men." Roe closed his eyes. It was true. It was the only thing God ever said to him out here.

It had been Roe's job. It had been his job to save Muck and Penkala. It had been his job to get to that foxhole and pull them out. But he hadn't. He had failed. He didn't even fucking know until the chaos had died down. And by then, Luz and Lipton had known, if not more. Christ, Luz had seen them blow up. If there had been anything to see. It was sudden – the explosion of a bomb. Or a grenade. Fireworks. Roe imagined what it had been like. One second they were there, yelling at Luz to hurry, and the next moment, they were gone in an uproar of ice and dirt. And that was all. A little burnt up cross remained and not even their fucking dog tags. Roe was glad there wasn't any flesh to mourn over. He didn't know if he could take that. He knew Malarkey couldn't have. Maybe none of them could.

It would almost be like Toye and Guarnere. But at least those two had lived. Roe still couldn't decide which had been worse – Toye with half his leg blown off and lying next to him in the snow, or Guarnere, sitting there with the leftover flesh quivering over the exposed bone in his leg. Fuck, the least the Germans could do was make a clean cut. Roe hadn't known what to do then. Not at first. He just froze, like Luz, like any man would have. But only for a moment. Because he was Doc Roe. And he couldn't afford shock. He couldn't afford anything.

"…_to be loved as to love…"_ Oh, God, to be loved. Who in the world loved him? His parents were dead; he had no lover or wife, no children, no siblings. His grandmother was dead too. He had no one in the world but these men, and even they were separated from him. He had done that. He had no choice. It was silent law.

But just for a moment, he wanted someone to hold him. Just for a moment, he wanted someone to touch him. He wanted someone to make him feel. He wanted someone to make him alive. He wanted to be human again. And he wanted to love. His heart had frozen over like this damn Belgian forest. He didn't know what it felt like anymore. And even if it hurt, he wanted it. It couldn't hurt more than this, more than emptiness. And he wished that he could seduce all this pain into dormancy with morphine. But even if he couldn't, he could bear it. Just so long as someone made him warm again. He had forgotten what that felt like too.

"Eugene!" She smiled and laughed and disappeared in the breeze. "Eugene!" Laughter. The white sheets billowed in the wind, hanging from the lines like sleeping ships. She ran behind them and hid. He could hear her footsteps in the bristling grass. "Eugene!" He smiled.

He didn't know who she was. Couldn't remember. Someone familiar. Someone he knew. Someone from the old life, the days of light, the days of home. And he longed to go there. He longed for pretty things and daydreams. He had forgotten what it was like to daydream.

"Eugene!" He felt her smile like the golden sunlight. It filled his heart and blossomed. Her laughter was music. He heard the white sheets billow. She was a girl, too young for anything harsh. She was joy. She was his dream.

He didn't feel the tear. He didn't even open his eyes. He just lay there, smiling to himself, and the tear made a streak in his face. It ran smooth down his skin. It would probably freeze before leaving his jaw.

She laughed.

He followed her.

The sheets flapped.

"…_with all my heart…"_

"Eugene?" Babe jumped in and took his hand, snatched the string from his fingers. The blood rushed, the color moved. Eugene was smiling. He opened his eyes. Another tear rolled out of the corner. Babe didn't understand. He threw the string aside. "What the hell are you doing?" Roe just grinned with tears flowing steady and tipped his head onto his shoulder, until the smile began to fade. He flexed his hand. His fingers were red.

He looked up. Babe had taken his hand in his. Roe's fingers rested on the blue headscarf. Babe just looked at him. His eyes were filled with everything he couldn't say. And Roe just stared back, fingers in Babe's hand, headscarf against his skin. Tears came.

He smiled.

Tears came.

"…_With all my heart."_


End file.
